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"Little Brown Fox" wrote:Hoo hoo hoo, I watched "A Deep, Deep Secret" again just last night. Cobalt had some excellent dialogue throughout most of this, let me tell you...

Cobalt had a ton of adorable/sad/funny quotes in that episode ;V;

"You're making friendship very difficult!"
"Wait! Come back! I wanna play with you!"
"Brother Astro Boy would be proud of me if he knew I saved those people from the flood water...But I guess I'll never be able to tell him about it, or anyone else for that matter.."

I believe he 'cried' in that last quote there, I looked back at the episode just now, and his tone of voice almost sounds like such, plus the coincidental little drop of water that fell from the ceiling to him. adfgshjdskl he's so adorable sometimes I can't even--

found here

This is the final panel of Invisible Giant; 1/2 Person follows in sequence.

So in the manga story order Cobalt was created before Uran?

Yes, if I recall correctly. But, for some reason, he seems different and is treated as new after this point, even though I believe he had already retconned the whole death scene thing (I'm still sore because he could have left Cobalt the hero of the story and didn't >:T ). So, it is implied that this is the same guy, but he acts a bit different- I don't think he was nearly as goofy before this. And he's treated as new... it just strikes me as a bit weird, is all.

Also, I guess Tezuka or somebody decided that they didn't like Uran's hair, and had it changed. Good call, imo.

Can't tell if that's a tear or a sweatdrop.

I think I've seen the image on that card-thing before, though maybe not on the object itself. He looks really similar here, but he lacks the eyelashes, and his hair is angled a bit differently than his twin's. Also, his head is smaller (as well as Uran's), and he has smaller hands, too.

Cobalt was created in the story named for him, which is called ATOM IN THE DEEP SEA in its 1963 animated version, though Cobalt had already been created, as Atom's lost (discarded) prototype. Anyway, in the manga, he sacrifices himself in the Midoro Swamp story. So, I guess that as Ochanomizu was making Uran, he just made a new Cobalt also. Apparently Atom's 'parents' had nothing do do with these new members of the family, unlike living things.

Yeah, but they literally seemed not to have anything to do with him before the Midoro Swamp arc. He was already established as Atom's brother, but he seemed to hang out at the Ministry instead of Atom's home. The parents also spared no care about his well being.

Also, I'd heard many ideas as to why he brought him back; but if he built a new one, or had him rebuilt in the story, he could have written it as so, and not needed to do a retcon.

You know, I have a theory about Cobalt . . . I feel as if Tezuka didn't really think his place in the Astro Boy canon through, carefully, and - by the time the anime came around in the mid-60's, he thought the character would fit better into the storyline as a cast-off prototype of Astro.

And if you look at anime Cobalt vs. (early) manga Cobalt, he looks decidedly different from Astro -- taller, leaner and different-shaped eyes. Personally, I think Cobalt resembles TENMA more than Astro does . . . as if they decided a long, tall Astro would be too intimidating.

Plus they didn't load him up with weaponry, and didn't amp-up his AI - so he's like a not-completely-fine-tuned Astro.

But I still love him!

When he was first introduced in the manga, he's actually quite as smart as Atom is- at the very least, he can do math quite as well, evidently. But he couldn't properly disassemble and/or reassemble that alarm clock; because of this he was described as "not very good with his hands", but I actually don't think that that has anything to do with that problem. It seems to be implied that a robot has an innate understanding of machines and how they work and fit together as individual parts, which makes me think that they can do much the same for their own bodies (quite unlike human beings and their own squishy bodies). Cobalt, for some reason, lacks this kind of understanding, which, considering the implications, makes his seemingly melodramatic meltdown after the fact make much more sense. This would be an almost crippling disability, wouldn't it? I don't even know what to call this, or if there even is any sort of human parallels.

When first introduced, and indeed, seemingly after being reintroduced, he didn't seem terribly clumsy at all, unlike in the show. Even then, that could be chalked up to his low fuel, or perhaps just bad luck. He was a little goofy in both (post reintroduction in the manga), but there's no way of knowing if his AI was supposed to be less perfect or not (although considering that not much was evidently changed between the dub and the original, as far as plot is concerned, this being any different is unlikely) in the original, considering that, as far as I know, it may not even exist anymore.

I have no idea where I was going with this, or if I ever had any idea. :T I just wish he was a little better developed (he could have been in the show, but since most of his appearances were never translated, and are unlikely to ever be unless one of us commissions a fansub group idk), and that I got to see more of him around. He didn't have a lot of time to experience much development at first, before he was (quite violently) killed off after an unfairly short time. After that, he was written much as he seemed to be in the show, to the best of my knowledge. And just as then, he was either a plot device or comic relief- or even just there, in the background, with no speaking role (side-eyes Medusa's Mansion or whatever it's called).

Yushee wrote:

"Little Brown Fox" wrote:Hoo hoo hoo, I watched "A Deep, Deep Secret" again just last night. Cobalt had some excellent dialogue throughout most of this, let me tell you...

Cobalt had a ton of adorable/sad/funny quotes in that episode ;V;

"You're making friendship very difficult!"
"Wait! Come back! I wanna play with you!"
"Brother Astro Boy would be proud of me if he knew I saved those people from the flood water...But I guess I'll never be able to tell him about it, or anyone else for that matter.."

I believe he 'cried' in that last quote there, I looked back at the episode just now, and his tone of voice almost sounds like such, plus the coincidental little drop of water that fell from the ceiling to him. adfgshjdskl he's so adorable sometimes I can't even--

I think the actual first line is "You're making friendship difficult!"